http://www.ny.frb.org/research/global_economy/globalindicators.html http://www.ny.frb.org/research/capital_markets/capitalmarkets_indicators.html http://www.fxstreet.com/economicindicators/economicindicators.asp?bhcp=1
Suggested the best place to find (your) best forecast(s): http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=economic+forecast&btnG=Google+Search
The fastest you're going to get them for free is television, Bloomberg or cnbc. The only way to get them faster is to get them from the same feed they do and that will be some distance from free.
Baruch, As for trading via the info... Most traders I know don't care what the specific number is that's being released... they care more about the pre-reaction and post-reaction to key economic report releases. I've often seen the Eminis surge northwards on bullish numbers and another day surge downwards on bullish numbers. Simply...buy if numbers are bullish and sell if numbers are bearish can get a trader in a lot of trouble... Instead...wait for whatever trade signal your using...if a signal appears...take the trade...if not...your on the sidelines. However, if your new to trading...I would highly recommend you develop a window of avoidance like 10mins prior and 10mins after the release of a key economic reports...NO TRADES... Until you've had enough time...many many months to study the merits of your trade signals when they occur without any regards to the reports. Once again...I highly recommend you study the performance of your trade methodology for many months as they appear near those key economic number releases. For example...take a close look @ 0945am est this past Friday when the Michigan Consumer Sentiment report was released... ES Emini open around 1057.75 @ 0930am est and rose until it found some resistanct at 1062.00...minutes prior to 0945am est... Numbers get reported by major networks (CNBC, Bloomberg, RobTV) a few minutes later as being better than expected... 09:54:30 ES is sitting around 1062.50 There's a knee jerk reaction that spiked the ES above 1064.25 0955:00 ES is back around 1062.50 In those 00:00:30 secs I saw spreads as much as +1.00 in the ES in a few seconds. Minutes later weak buyers couldn't get any more help to stay above the 1062.00 support level (old resistance)... ES and gang begin their steep decline. _______ I got a buy signal around 0936am est via a Bullish Divergence signal (price action only...no indicators)... Then I started getting trade signals to get Short between 0951am - 0954am est... As for those Short signals... http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23567&perpage=1&pagenumber=8 _______ Baruch...in the recent past...I've seen the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index cause parabolic price rises of +3 points in the ES in the first knee jerk reaction... hold the new price levels without any sell-off to finish the day higher... I've also seen in the past what it did on Friday. All a trader can do is use stops, strict discipline with trade signals and study the performance of such to see if their trade methodology should be on the sidelines or not. Therefore...going with the flow implies a trader that's willing to trade by the seat of his/her pants without a trading plan. Good luck. NihabaAshi
I suppose that the problem with last Friday was that there was not one but several economic indicators published? Some bullish, some bearish.